CD-ROM: an on-ramp to the information superhighway

Medical Laboratory Observer, Jan, 1995 by Seth L. Haber

You can sit in your office and, in a few minutes, look up pertinent references. You can then append several abstracts to your reports--be they surgical pathology, cytology, hematology, or clinical laboratory--when diagnosing an uncommon condition. That will earn the appreciation, if not the gratitude, of clinicians. Such thankfulness can contribute significantly to a pathologist's job security. I use NLM databases several times a day--and have been chief of my department for more than 30 years. Here are other helpful CD-ROM databases.

SilverPlatter (various prices from SilverPlatter, Nor-wood, Mass.) is a direct competitor of Aries Medline Knowledge Finder. SilverPlatter also provides various NLM databases for physicians. This firm's search engine is designed to list the appropriate abstracts in chronological order. The Windows version allows you to sort retrieved records alphabetically by author, title, etc. In some ways, this design is better for information managers who want to show you everything available on a subject, starting with the most current item. (But Aries' relevance filter makes it faster for physicians to do their own searches for specific subsets. In the best of all possible worlds, both Aries and SilverPlatter would let you choose whether to employ a relevance filter in a search.)

In addition to the usual NLM medical specialty databases, Silver-Platter has an amazing library of other information sets. Among them are BIOETHICSLINE, Human Nutrition, Excerpta Medica, HealthPLANCD, OSH-ROM, and a complete YearBook collection from 1989 to the present. There are also instructional CDs on such topics as the biology of cancer, primary cancer of the skin, pigmented lesions of the skin, and maintaining an airway in children.

SilverPlatter offers the multimedia presentations of the proceedings from some societies' annual meetings. Additionally, the firm has CDs on hundreds of arts, sciences, business law, education, and other nonmedical subjects. Databases are updated either monthly, quarterly, semiannually, or annually.

The AFIP Atlas of Tumor Pathology Fascicles (Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Washington, D.C.) will be issued on CD-ROM. When the set is complete, two or three fascicles might be included on each disk. You will be able to search for words or combinations of words by topics or for illustrations. You will also be able to add annotations within the database. These might include cross-references, interesting cases, or your own collection of color slides. The annotations will be recorded on your hard disk but can be "flagged" in the appropriate area of your CD-ROM. At press time, the first disk of the atlas, Tumors of the Thyroid Gland, was available for $58.

Scientific American Medicine ($395 from Scientific American Medicine, New York, N.Y.) Many pathologists find this CD-ROM database invaluable (particularly for clinical-pathological correlation). Not only are all three bound volumes on the disk with charts and illustrations, but there is also a series of tests that you can complete and send in for CME credits. Its major advantage over the paper version is that you can do Boolean searches by word strings; you are not limited to looking things up by titles. You can also cut and paste whole articles or just portions to include in your reports and newsletters. Scientific American Surgery, which is currently available only in print, will soon be published on a CD-ROM.